A network of communities in West-Central Mexico has rescued its traditional landraces of maize. This experience shows that the benefits of defending an ancestral good is not only limited to regaining cultural identity and agrobiodiversity. The defence of native maize has become a space where old and new knowledge redefined
agriculture and where people achieved food sovereignty, technical autonomy, and a new sense of community.

What is successful access and benefit sharing’ for
smallholder family farmers? This contribution argues it is not about legal contracts or mechanisms that regulate the international transfer of plant genetic resources. It is about farmers’ access to seed diversity and the ability to share in the benefits of the continuing cycles of seed conservation and development. The Community Technology Development Trust in Zimbabwe supports mechanisms that, in practice, do result in substantial access to and benefit sharing of local and modern varieties.

Access and benefit sharing of plant genetic resources is a crucial but very complex, political and legalistic matter. Does the formal system work for family farmers? As we see in this special issue of Farming Matters, co-produced with Bioversity International, it poses many challenges. At the same time, farmers around the world are leading successful initiatives for access and benefit sharing. This issue of Farming Matters presents cases that demonstrate the limited extent to which family farmers have been able to benefit from the ‘formal’ ABS process. It also uncovers some of the effective principles and mechanisms for access and benefit sharing that are part and parcel of farmers’ everyday practices, such as community seed banks, and successful collaborations between researchers and farmers. Some of these arrangements have links with the formal system.

A platform of farmers, retailers and service providers,civil society organisations, NGOs, government officials, and researchers improves livelihoods in Rwanda. Through
interaction and collaboration, these groups experiment with various technological and institutional innovations, thereby tackling local agricultural challenges. This
experience illustrates the importance of institutionalising a space where knowledge can be co-created.

For the past half century agricultural innovation has denied a voice to the many groups who work outside the profession of science – farmers, food providers, women and the urban poor. The value of their expertise gained through practical experience must be recognised in the production and validation of knowledge.